Poll about darker themes and being a meanie

Game Design Discussion
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I wanted to get some info on how people here feel about darker tones in their games. I don’t promote any real life cruelty, but I’ve admittedly always loved darker themes in erotic content. I want to know the level of enjoyment others receive from this, both for my own curiosity and to know what direction I could take future projects. It will not show who voted what for each of the polls to maintain privacy.

If something is marked with (X), it means that I would appreciate it if you would explain your outlook with a comment. If you are uncomfortable with this or see others bring up the same points, it’s fine to skip explanation and just vote for that option.

How do you feel about mean-spirited content?

  • A favorite
  • It improves the project
  • Indifferent
  • A turn off
  • Ruins it
  • It depends on the project (X)
0 voters

What tone do you prefer in mean-spirited content?

  • Playful
  • Ambiguous
  • Cold
  • Cruel
  • Scary
  • Other (X)
  • I don’t like mean-spirited content
0 voters

Are darker themes more tolerable if in a more cartoony tone?

  • Yes, much more
  • Yes, slightly
  • No
  • It depends (X)
0 voters

How do you feel about dub-con fetish content? (e.g. someone is fattened who is against it, but also likes it)

  • A favorite
  • It improves the project
  • Indifferent
  • A turn off
  • Ruins it
  • It depends on the project (X)
0 voters

How do you feel about non-con fetish content? (e.g. someone is fattened who doesn’t want to be)

  • A favorite
  • It improves the project
  • Indifferent
  • A turn off
  • Ruins it
  • It depends on the project (X)
0 voters

How do you feel about death from a fetish? (Health issues from weight gain, popping from inflation, digestion from vore, etc.)

  • A favorite
  • It improves the project
  • Indifferent
  • A turn off
  • Ruins it
  • It depends on the project (X)
  • It depends on the fetish (X)
0 voters

How do you feel about dark topics if it’s shown to be a dream, or of zero consequence?

  • I prefer it to be consequential
  • I like it the same as if it was real
  • It makes dark topics more tolerable
  • I still don’t like them
  • None of the above (X)
0 voters

I know I have my limits on how dark something can be before I can’t stomach it, but I also know I have things I tolerate that others would detest. I will not judge any opinion as long as we all can agree that these things are not acceptable in real life, as no suffering is justified by sexual gratification. I might append this with more polls, but these are the main ones I wanted to know.

NEW WAVE OF POLLS 1
Wanted to add a bit based on people responses and my own thoughts. Also moved the other post’s poll into here.

Is threat-of-death where it doesn’t occur better than death?

  • Much better
  • A little better
  • The same as death, I like it
  • The same as death, I dislike it
  • Worse, I prefer death
  • It depends (X)
0 voters

Is darker content better when done on a character who “deserves it”? (e.g. a villain or bratty character) I know this might vary a lot on the character, but this is whether or not this has any sway at all.

  • Much better
  • A little better
  • The same
  • I prefer when they don’t deserve it
  • It depends (X)
0 voters

Who do you prefer to be the mean-spirited one?

  • The protagonist / yourself
  • An antagonist
  • Side characters
  • It depends (X)
  • I don’t like mean-spirited content
0 voters

Who do you prefer to be the “victim” of mean-spirited content (Weird wording but you get the point)

  • The protagonist / yourself
  • An antagonist
  • Side characters
  • It depends (X)
  • I don’t like mean-spirited content
0 voters
3 Likes
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Mostly, I do this kinda simplistic thing where I want all the Good Things over here, and all the Bad Things over there. For me, sex and fetish content are Good, and cruelty and suffering are Bad.

Of course it’s not quite that simple. I want my fictional people to be people-y, so that they “count” to me - it makes the sex and fetish stuff pop! And since real people are sometimes cruel, I could imagine a work with such eerily flawless, saintly characters that I would want a little petty cruelty from them. But works that saccharine are rare, and usually have worse problems anyway.

As for dubcon & noncon: I actually like it, just not the most common way it’s done! See, for someone to dubiously consent, they have to have a mixed reaction to the same thing - very human, and it can lead all sorts of interesting directions. But I’m sick of that trope where the WG protagonist works around and short-circuits so much stuff by just fattening people without their knowledge. If they never find out, it’s jarringly unrealistic; same if they just forgive him; and the author never has the balls to let the fattened characters actually be pissed about it.

1 Like
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I like it when people/“society” have negative reactions to the characters getting fat but the characters in the relationship (or whatever) like it. bonus points if the non-fat relationship character bullies the fat one in a way that triggers a humiliation fetish (the other way around can also be good if I’m in that mood).

dub/non-con I don’t really care for. I want everyone involved to have a good time but I feel like dub/non-con is one of the most common story setups. I usually try to headcannon it into them being more into it but sometimes the story fights that to much to be viable

death is usually a bit to far but I like there to be negatives at times and other times not

3 Likes
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see, for me it really depends on what you mean by “dark.” i like “realism,” or at least some approximation of it, and i feel like that often includes “dark” themes as well, but i feel like abject cruelty or mean-spirited stuff isnt necessarily a part of that. i do think those definitely have a time and a place, though. im a big fan of them. its just not something that every project needs. to be honest, though, it is kind of disappointing how little stuff seems to cater to the “darker” stuff (in terms of both mean-spirited stuff and more “realistic” issues) that isnt just fatphobia or really corny or just straight up wrong or whatever. yknow like that kind of “oooo im 300lbs its sooo hard to move and im so pathetic and ugly and im literally dying of being fat” kind of stuff. theres a balance to be struck here.

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Realism is a pretty important idea in all this I guess. I tried to leave much of the polls vague to this and get a general “tone” reading instead. Dark realism is very different from dark cartoony, but the feeling behind it is the important part.

1 Like
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I’m surprised at the spread of results here, I thought for sure there’d be a clear majority in favour of no dark themes. For me it really depends on how it’s presented. If you have a more serious story then darker themes are what I’d expect, because where’s the threat if all the fetish stuff just makes you stronger? Of course it’s also important to not go too far in the other direction, where you want to actively avoid all the fetish content just to have the best chance at getting through the game.

Humiliation is an odd one too; it can be an attractive addition if it’s part of a relationship but outright cruelty and removal of control is a major turnoff for me, I don’t want to witness borderline torture scenes.

Death via fetish is a complete no-go too, I don’t care how horny I am going into it, if I see that then I’m closing the game. Death in general is fine, say if it’s a part of the storyline, but once the cause is tied to a fetish (with the occasional exception for vore depending on how it’s presented, Sabrina the Hungry Witch comes to mind as a good example) then I’m completely drawn out of the experience.

1 Like
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I will say, the results of the first poll are the most interesting to me. Currently, the leading answer is “It depends” by a decent margin. I guess this means most people do like mean-spirited content in some form, but dont have any personal attachment or bias. Might need to add a different poll to that section. Does editing posts reset poll votes? Or would editing the poll itself do that?

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For me personally, it’s more that it isn’t well-defined. I honestly don’t have any idea what mean-spirited means in this context so it’s pretty hard to choose anything but “it depends” since you’re asking something very broad and subjective. I would recommend asking more specific stuff instead like “How do you feel about death by vore?” or “How do you feel about darker stories in fetish games?”

I’ll just give my opinion as a writer with somewhat unique tastes since that’s probably more valuable than just another vote in a poll.

I like darker stories a lot.

Honestly, when it comes to regular non-fetish stories, I’m barely entertained at all by stuff where everything always turns out okay in the end.

It doesn’t feel interesting enough when you already know how the story will end within the first ten minutes or so. There needs to be drama, risk, and loss. I don’t like outright bad endings, as in, for example, the main character loses completely and dies, but I do like bittersweet endings, such as “the main character sacrifices themself to save their friend.” Bonus points if the story continues from the perspective of that friend. (I’ve actually done something similar in a few of my works and it’s very sad when it happens but it’s incredible for character development and makes the overall story far more meaningful.)

However, when it comes to fetish stories, things get a lot more complex.

I like the darkness, but I like that darkness not directly in the fetish part of the story. Though, unlike with non-fetish stories, I’ll at least play/read/watch/etc stuff even if it’s all sparkles and rainbows because I enjoy the fetish side of it. A good example would be (any other devs here feel free to steal this) a game where you try to survive in a harsh post-apocalyptic world, but maybe status in this world is determined by someone’s weight, so over the course of the story, the main character gets heavier and heavier. In this case, the fetish itself doesn’t have all the health issues or other dark concepts but the plot and story can be very dark as long as they still keep that boundary between the darkness of the fetish content and the darkness of the non-fetish content.

There’s also what I tend to do, which is keeping the fetish part as part of the characters rather than part of the overarching story. For example, a certain character of mine is very very gluttonous, but it isn’t ever a major part of the story except during her origin. It is still mentioned very often, but only because it is part of her personality and her size often gets in the way. To put it simply, fetish story characters in a non-fetish story. This doesn’t mean you cut out fetish content in the story entirely, just generally keep it to certain sections while the rest is just a typical story.

…Well that ended up a lot longer than I expected. I really don’t expect anyone to read to this point with how long that was, but if anyone does, I hope it helps or was at least entertaining. I would like to clarify that these are just my personal opinions as a writer and I don’t intend to speak for the whole forum.

3 Likes
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I ADDED NEW POLLS
Just a few, but I think they’re good questions

As for the first question, I don’t really want to put a solid definition to “mean-spirited” because I want to keep it vague. There are so many factors to this (as evidenced by the wall of polls :sweat_smile:) and going too much into specifics would just multiply it. While I would like to hear how everyone’s opinion of these things is altered by different things, I need to make wide sweeps with the questions.

Mean-spirited simply means “a scenario that in some way, shape, or form feels some kind of mean”. That feeling of “this feels mean” persists through all of the tropes and variations I’ve listed and I hope people understand that I’m not looking for something specific. The “It depends” answer is actually perfectly acceptable for the mean-spirited question, as I made the following polls to show more on how it depends. It a nice very basic, very broad question to see how many people need more nuance and who has a firm preference.

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So I mostly answered with the “It depends” option because I am more interested in how and in what way this “mean-spirited content” is made. I personally am of a belief that anything goes as long as its fully fictional and thus is not bothering anyone other then those who intentionally search for it. So a well done darker elements that fit the general story and world of a theoretical game can be a great addition, especially since the amount of creators that venture into this darker sphere is really small. Also as another comment has pointed out maybe you should consider making more specific polls to get more accurate results.

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It can be seen as a high-risk move that may improve add a stronger impact to the story or just ruin it by making the audience watch scenes that may be found disgusting and/or gratuitous.

I guess the safe way to do it is having all the mean-spirited actions being done by a Big-Jack-Horner-like antagonist, who is absolutely evil and never meant to be humanized. Stories with a strong plot may provide a grander purpose for a humanized character to be cruel, utterly, immoral or just a jerk, but that depends if the writer is set on writing porn with a plot to start with.

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I’d guess many of these answers are very content-specific for everyone.

As someone who favors overfeeding/overinflation resulting in bursting/popping, I’m on board for characters being meaner to each other in that context and over a wider range of tone.

If it’s a different kind of content, I’m less inclined to like it (other than the more general evil antagonist being evil as a strong motivation to stop them).

1 Like
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I’m in the camp that doesn’t necessarily like “dark” content itself but is willing to accept some of it in the name of realism. For me, what really makes weight gain fun is the way it affects a character’s interactions with the world. Some of those interactions can be “dark”–bullying, humiliation, limited/loss of mobility, etc. I don’t necessarily want to see a character become disabled because they gained 500 pounds, but it would be a bit disappointing if they just went on living in the exact same way as before, as if nothing happened–because at that point, I’d just be playing “Number Go Up Simulator”. Probably the most extreme example that I’ve actually put up with to the end is Gaining Perspective. The game gets very dark as it explores the logical conclusion of extreme weight gain, but since it does so in the name of realism, I was able to stomach it (if only barely, at times).

When it comes to cruel behavior, I don’t like hurting people, even fictional characters, so perpetrating stuff like dub-con and especially non-con makes me feel guilty. But I might feel a bit better about it if it took the form of punishment against a deserving target. And, of course, letting the Bad Guys be the ones to do the Bad Things is a pretty easy way to make such content more palatable. I suspect that a lot of people feel the same way about these things.

Death from the fetish is almost always too extreme for me. I don’t care overly much about death from other causes, but once it’s associated with the fetish, it ruins the fetish for me, as others have said. Vore can occasionally be an exception, although I would file it under the cruel behavior mentioned above.

5 Likes
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Death makes the choices have more weight to them and therefore makes all your choices you make mean more. That’s why I think permanent death in fetish games (especially vore) should be there as it makes your choices actually worth while, and actually makes you consider the choices. It also makes the character that much darker since they’re willing to kill.
Since it’s fiction, I don’t have a problem with the darker themes.

2 Likes
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Weight gain that’s forced, unwilling, or non-consensual is my personal favorite kind of weight gain in fiction. I love seeing a character who doesn’t want to be fat get fattened up against their will. I love it when everything about how they move, dress, navigate physical spaces and interact with the world gets flipped on its head.

On the other hand, I don’t like death or health complications. I just don’t find sickness, death or violence to be hot. It’s why I struggle with vore and dislike the kind of inflation that ends with bursting. In addition, the possibility of a fattened character dying undercuts the fantasy of said character being stuck too fat to do anything about their predicament.

2 Likes